Le timbre et le train

For Claudel, translating is an extension of the act of writing. It’s the ear that grasps the “timbre” and “train” of a foreign language. It’s up to the poet to find the equivalent in his own language. From his dialogue with Schwob and Gide in the 1910s, he concluded that words are distinguished more by their values than by their literalness. These values do not overlap from one language to the next, hence the need to weigh words on a more delicate scale than that of meaning alone. The ideal towards which the poet strives is akin to “transubstantiation”. It’s no longer a question of translating, but of “responding” to God’s Word, his “tone” and his “pace”.